


tooth and claw

by loupettes



Series: just the bits in-between [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s02e02 Tooth and Claw, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Humor, Lust, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28636470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loupettes/pseuds/loupettes
Summary: Part two of thejust the bits in-betweenseries: a collection of missing scenes taking place between or during each episode of series 2.tooth and claw. Sets place on the cart ride back to the TARDIS. Fluff, humour and a slightly hormonal Rose Tyler faced with a devilishly handsome Tenth Doctor.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: just the bits in-between [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095053
Comments: 15
Kudos: 59





	tooth and claw

It was a little chilly, and Rose felt a little like she’d just been scolded by the supply teacher and sent to detention, but nevertheless, she was perfectly content. 

Because, really, how couldn’t she be? She’d spent an evening with _Queen Victoria_ , _the_ Queen Victoria; she’d narrowly avoided death by a _werewolf,_ which are actually bloody _real,_ it turns out; dossed around with her closest mate who was now apparently not opposed to _very occasional_ flirty banter; and essentially spent the last 24 hours either screaming for her life or laughing herself into exile. 

“Do you remember,” she began, and the Doctor looked turned his head to look at her, “when we got knighted in 1879?”

“By Queen Vic, no less!”

"She had the white hat on and everything!"

 _"And_ the bloody diamond!"

They giggled, swinging their legs over the edge of the cart as they were wheeled back to the TARDIS by a rather friendly gentleman transporting some hay across the hills. 

_So. Very. Slowly_.

“God. No wonder people died so young back in these days,” Rose groaned. “Life _felt_ longer.”

He held his finger up in disagreement. “You lot, you’re all in a rush to go nowhere. So impatient.” He gestured around them, arms held out wide in the open space. “Enjoy the Scottish highlands, the fresh unpolluted breeze, the sound of silence, the occasional nineteenth-century sheep.”

“Alright for you, you’ve got a couple of hundred years left under your belt. I’ve only got sixty.”

He scoffed. “Last night, I watched you eat 3 bars of Dairy Milk, _inhale_ a bag of Co-op salt and vinegar crisps — _the share size_ — and hobble uncomfortably to bed. You haven’t got sixty years left.”

They were giddy, everything was making them laugh it would seem. Rose gazed upon the grass appearing from under the cart beneath her feet, the odd patch of amber amidst the yellow and green blades - quite different from the green she was used to in England. Well, she says _‘used to’;_ perhaps better described as _‘used to seeing on tv’._ No such thing as grass in London. 

She’d never been to Scotland, she recalled. There’d been that time her mum had suggested they do when she was a little younger, but when the day came to get the train, Rose had caught a nasty case of chickenpox and she ended up spending half-term tucked away in bed with her mum nursing her back to good health. She still can’t think about the blue _Poweraid_ without wanting to die. 

A memory of today momentarily intruded her thoughts and she chuckled. “I can’t believe you just dropped your accent mid-fright! Her _face_!”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly high on my priorities list: to maintain a Scottish accent. Not sure if you were aware of the _massive_ werewolf chasing us. Or, you know, protecting the British monarchy lest it be forever changed.” He paused. “Which I don’t suppose would be a _bad_ thing, per se.”

“Although, to be fair, I still can’t believe you can even _do_ a Scottish accent.”

“Neither can I,” he admitted proudly. “I didn’t know what was going to come out when I started speaking. Thankfully I didn’t sound like you.”

“I can’t be amazing at everything, otherwise I’d have been knighted a long time ago.”

“Are you trying to assert that the only reason you got knighted at the ripe old age of nineteen is because of your inability to imitate a Scottish accent?”

“Among just a few, yes.” She gathered her legs up and swung herself round to lean her right side against the back, unzipping her boots and tucking her toes under his legs while he shifted a little more to the right to give her the extra space. She pulled out one of her feet from under him and nudged his hip. “ _You_ , mister, also owe me a tenner.”

He scowled. “Well, I obviously don’t have it on me now, do I?”

“You made a bet with money you don’t have?”

“Do _you_ have any money on you?”

She patted herself down, reaching under her t-shirt to pull out a fiver from her bra. She wagged it in front of him and he scorned. 

“Maybe not a tenner, but always carry a spare fiver on you,” Rose explained once he starting shaking his head. “Even if you’re travelling with a time lord. _Especially_ if you’re travelling with a time lord. One in particular springs to mind. A slippery little bugger who offers dates without the intention of paying.”

He waved his hand in dismissal of her quip. “Can you imagine if Queen Vic would have seen that fiver with her great-great-granddaughter on it?”

“She would have said, ‘ _who’s that other old lady?’,_ because, correct me if I’m wrong, but she hasn’t met her great-great-granddaughter yet,” she teased, sticking the fiver back into her bra. It didn’t go unnoticed that he watched her do so. 

In fact, it hadn’t gone unnoticed that he’d done a lot more _watching_ today, and a little bit more touching too. It had sent quite the chill down her spine and she’d spent most of today — well, the last few days really — feeling a little off-balance on it. She’d started feeling like a bloody hormonal teenager all over again - she was supposed to be slipping into her twenties soon! But that hair of his, oh god how she wanted to grasp it sometimes, _fistfuls of it_ and feel it silk through her fingers. It had driven her a bit wild to see him in a t-shirt today, a better peek at that delicious neck of his, skin that she imaged tasted so bloody divine. She considered whether it would be _completely_ inappropriate with this new new Doctor to just snog the bones off him. Would that be weird? Her nine hundred-year-old mate, always been a bit of a flirt but otherwise expressed no prior interest in sexual advancement? 

But he _had_. See, that was the thing. Just earlier this week he returned a pair of knickers to her after they’d found themselves in his pile of fresh washing and he’d got her all flustered with the way he spun them around on his finger and wiggled his eyebrows. She’d never considered it before now: that maybe they _could_. Before, with the old him, she’d had those occasions too, the odd moment where she feared she might grab the lapels of his old leather jacket and snog him against one of the corals in the control room, but she never actually went through with it. She had come _close to_ one evening, when they rushed back after getting caught touching an ancient and sacred heirloom — unbeknownst to them, of course — and his smile was giddy on adrenaline and her core involuntarily and rather unexpectedly flushed, sending a wave of heat throughout her so intense it had taken her everything not to let herself go and ravish the man. That was, undoubtedly, one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do, and her body had decided to torment her in the weeks following by only opening up the possibility to _that_ kind of relationship in her dreams. 

But this had gotten out of hand. It was like that _all the bloody time_ , he only need look at her and she was writhing beneath her skin, itching to throw herself at him and taste every inch of him she could get hold of, _finally_ just run her hands through that hair, scrape her nails across his cheekbones, run her tongue down that neck and keep going, further and further—

“Are you listening to me?”

“Hmm?” She felt the heat rush to her cheeks, or was it already there? She realised he must have been talking, so she cleared her throat and made an attempt at regaining control. “Sorry, my _Doctor autotune_ must have switched off once it heard you say the words _‘synchronic feedback’.”_

“Very funny.”

She averted her gaze quickly back out to the surroundings, taking a few internal deep breaths to bring herself back to a point where she could hold a reasonable conversation with him that wouldn’t result in her shagging him right here and now on the back of this cart. 

_Pull yourself together._

“I think the most reasonable substitute for you not paying up is to get a tattoo.”

He cackled at that, and she smiled at the way he threw his head back in glee. “Good one.”

“I’m serious! I want you to get _‘we are not amused’_ tattooed on your wrist.”

“There’s a lot of things I’m willing to do for you, Rose Tyler. Bring on board a scabby wart of a man because you told me he wanted to see the stars, end the world, die for you. But getting a tattoo with _‘we are not amused’_ is a step too far.”

“Sir Doctor, I am appalled.”

“Dame Rose, I don’t care.” 

His animated little hum was delightful, his cheeks bunching up as his closed smile grew wide. He folded his arms and tilted his head back to lean against the cart, gazing up into the sky. She wished to do the same; lean her head close her eyes to the soothing sounds of horses hooves cluttering away rhythmically, the soft nudges of the carriage spare the occasional jolt over a dip in the grass. She was a bit chilly though, and she mindlessly traced the goosebumps on her arm as her eyes stayed closed.

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Hmm?”

Her eyes lazily opened once more and he'd turned his head to look at her. “You didn’t come to dinner last night.”

“No, well, while you were getting wined and dined by The Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I was locked up in a cellar about to become a _werewolf’s_ dinner, if you remember.”

“Ah. Yes, that’ll be why.”

“Not even just a nice friendly wolf who might have offered to share his sheep with me. A big old _were_ wolf.”

“I do vaguely recall, yes,” he mused. His eyes drifted to somewhere behind her and she furrowed her brow at his expression; his lips were moving, so whatever it was he was thinking about was apparently engrossing his attention. 

“What?”

“Hmm?”

“You. You’re away with the fairies.”

“That’s Ireland. _Fairies_.”

“Never said they weren’t.”

“We're not in Ireland.”

“Yes, I know —”

“We’re in _Scotland_.”

“Oh, my god.”

“More _Loch Ness Monsters_. And, apparently, _werewolves_.”

She put her face in her hands, trying desperately not to laugh but she couldn’t help herself. She was awarded a playful squeeze of her ankle, pinching it with his thumb and index finger and giving it a wiggle. He had a devilish grin about him she wasn’t too keen on and was already proving to be causing her far too much trouble. 

For some reason, his expression had tugged at a hidden corner of her memory. A fleeting inconsistency somewhere in the back of her mind. Almost like an unconscious association; his curiosity sparked that exact one that she’d stuffed to the back of her mind. 

_“Something of the wolf.”_

“Hmm?” 

“I dunno. S’probably... I dunno. No. Never mind,” she dismissed, although regrettably. He watched her curiously before his gaze flickered down. It was only because he drew it back up to her that she felt his inaudible probe.

“Just something the werewolf said.”

“To you?”

“Mmm.” 

He opened his mouth, paused, but gave her a reassuring smile when she creased her brow questioningly at him instead. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re weirding me out, what’s going on?”

“What! I haven’t done anything!” 

“You’re looking odd.”

“That’s quite a rude thing to say to a person. If I said that to you, I’d have had a slap by now.” 

She rolled her eyes and nudged his hip, but he grabbed her foot and got there first, feathering his fingers across the arch and she squirmed, yelping as his fingers tickled the sensitive skin and she only screeched further when she had nowhere to run, no way of escaping his vicious siege of the nerves in her foot and the slimy little git dared to have a _smirk_ on his face as he hooked his spare arm under her shin to keep her even more at the mercy of his fingers. 

The horses protested their disruptions loudly and the coachman called out for them to hush. The Doctor’s grip on her foot only tightened to keep her still and he held a finger to his lips. She wiggled her foot trying to release his hold but he flashed her a glare.

“Behave,” he warned. 

“I’m gonna _kill_ you.”

He feigned offence and she took a deep breath to calm herself enough to be still; only once he felt her go limp did he let her go. She pulled her legs closer to her chest and locked her hands around her ankles. She’ll get him back later. 

Her hair was driving her _mad._ It had started to go a bit wild and she dreaded the moment later when she’d have to run a brush through it. She really needed to start bringing out bobbles on their trips. She momentarily contemplated daring herself to undo his tie and use that as a substitute, but he wasn't bloody wearing one. She groaned, and swung her neck around, allowing the wind to naturally brush it away from her face, but she had to blow the occasional strand from her mouth. 

“You never tie it up anymore.” He pointed out, as if hearing her thoughts. She eyed him suspiciously.

“S’too short now.”

“Speaking of,” he cleared his throat and gestured to her skirt. She looked down at it, horrified, and a little flustered. “Surprised you didn’t dismantle the monarchy today with that nakedness of yours.”

“Taken out of context, that’s perhaps the worst pick up line I've ever had said to me.”

He smirked — and there it was again! That _look! The_ look! She’d seen that look a hundred times on boys her age and she was gobsmacked to be seeing it on this Lord of Time, near a millennium years of age and absolutely one hundred percent _alien!_ But as quick as he’d flashed it, as quick as he’d let it escape his reach he’d retained it, and his smirk was once more entirely platonic. She knew she was doing a bloody awful job at attempting to maintain the same approach, and the worst part was she knew he had her sussed already — the trick was to beat him at his own game.

God, what on Earth was she on about? _'Beat him at his own game?'_ Suggestive looks, pick-up lines, flirting? Stop it, that’s not what’s happening. His gaze was certainly not on her right now; she needed to do a better job of reminding herself this was all in her head.

“S'your fault I’m naked,” she added, completely out of her own accord. 

His eyes widened. “I’m sorry?”

_Got him._

She shrugged nonchalantly, running her palms flat down her sins. “I’d have been dressed appropriately for 1979. Would have fit right in. Somehow, your terrible driving means _I'm_ the one who has to pay for it.”

He scoffed, although she did hear the relief in it. “Fine. _I’m sorry._ Better?”

“No,” she said sadly. “But I'm working on my revenge, don’t you worry.”

He sniggered, but otherwise didn’t reply. She enjoyed this view of him, the one where she had the upper hand, and they spent a few minutes in a comfortable, yet oddly loaded, silence.

“Right,” he finally broke it. “I think now’s as good a time as any to admit I have no idea where in these Scottish highlands I parked that TARDIS.”

“Bloody hell, not again!” 

“Listen,” he insisted, “I try my best to show you the stars, least you can do is give me a break when I misplace the ship needed to show you said stars.”

“I give you lots of breaks, remember? S'why I’m not currently rattling your bones for taking me to meet a werewolf rather than Ian Dury.”

“Well, you got knighted. So all in all, no harm done.”

She rolled her eyes. _“‘All in all, no harm done’_ will be the name of my autobiography.”

**Author's Note:**

> There really was no point to this other than complete pointless flirting nonsense, as is essentially the whole plot line of Tooth and Claw. It's a nice scene of what could have been, what it was all leading up to, before it all started falling shit in the next episode. Queue the sighs of longing.


End file.
